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THIS FIRST EDITION OF 
WALT whitman's diary IN CANADA 
IS LIMITED TO FIVE HUNDRED COPIES 



WALT WHITMAN'S 
DIARY IN CANADA 



WALT WHITMAN'S 
DIARY IN CANADA 

WITH EXTRACTS FROM 

OTHER OF HIS DIARIES AND 

LITERARY NOTE-BOOKS 

EDITED BY 
WILLIAM SLOANE KENNEDY 




BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 

MCMIV 






Copyright, 1904, by 
William Sloane Kennedy 



Entered at Stationers' Hall 



Published November, 1904 



LIBRARY of C0NG3ESS 
TwG CoDies Received 

NOV 28 1904 

Oopyrigni tntry 
jTCf^.^i-. ID 014 
cuss A XXi Noi 

COPY a. 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



EDITOR'S PREFACE 

The transcribing of these out-door notes from the 
worn and time-stained fragments of paper (backs of 
letters, home-made note-books, etc.), on which they 
were originally written, has been so fascinating a task 
for me that I feel confident the subject-matter will 
interest other lovers of Whitman. I don't know that 
they need any other foreword than just the telling 
how they came into my hands for publication. 

In the autumn of 1900 I wrote to my old friend, 
the late Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke (the senior 
member of Walt Whitman's literary executors), 
suggesting that he join me in bringing out a" Read- 
ers' Handbook to Leaves of Grass," in the preparation 
of which I had been engaged for a number of years, 
by contributing any material he might have that was 
available. He responded with enthusiasm to this 
proposal for cooperative work. But, alas ! a year 
later he had passed into eternity.* By his son. Dr. 
Edward Pardee Bucke, however, I was generously 

♦ He fell on the icy floor of a veranda of his residence, struck on the back 
of his head, and never regained consciousness. Few knew that this gay-hearted 
optimist, with his magnificent physique, had to fight his way through life (after 
twenty) without the aid of feet, other than artificial. His feet were amputated 
after being frozen in a (finally successful) attempt to cross the Sierra Nevada 
Mountains in the winter of 1856, in company with one of the two original discov- 
erers of silver in Nevada. I have the romantic printed accou&t of that daring 
feat. 

V 



EDITOR'S PREFACE 

furnished with such manuscripts of Walt Whitman 
as seem to have been intended for our purpose, and 
from them the following diary and other notes were 
selected. The publication of the Readers' Hand- 
book is held over for the present. 

In his " Specimen Days," Whitman devotes only a 
couple of pages to the St. Lawrence and Saguenay 
trip, — a condensed abstract of his journal. 

The portrait used as a frontispiece to this book is 
reproduced fi'om a photograph by Edy Brothers of 
London, Ontario, made during the visit to Dr. 
Bucke recorded in the diary. It has never before 
been published. All the notes in the volume are 
by the editor. 



W. S. K. 



Belmont, Mass., 

November, 190-k 



VI 



WALT WHITMAN'S 
DIARY IN CANADA 

London, Ontario, June 18, 1880.* Calm 
and glorious roll the hours here — the whole 
twenty-four. A perfect day (the third in 
succession) ; the sun clear ; a faint, fresh, 
just palpable air setting in from the south- 
west ; temperature pretty warm at mid- 
day, but moderate enough mornings and 
evenings. Ev^ery thing growing well, espe- 
cially the perennials. Never have I seen 
verdure — grass and trees and bushery — to 
greater advantage. All the accompaniments 
joyous. Cat-birds, thrushes, robins, etc., 
singing. The profuse blossoms of the tiger- 
lily (is it the tiger-lily ?) ^ mottling the lawns 

^ Whitman left Camden on June 3 (" on a first- 
class sleeper '") for Canada. Passed Niagara June 4, 
and has described his impressions of it as seen on this 
particular occasion {Specimen Days, p. 160, 1st ed.) 
On June 4 he writes, " I am domiciled at the hospi- 
table house of my friends Dr. and Mrs. Bucke, in the 
ample and charming garden and lawns of the asjlum." 
^ Probably the Turk's Head lily {Lilium super- 
bum). 

1 1 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

and gardens everywhere with their glowing 
orange-red. Roses everywhere, too. 

A stately show of stars last night : the 
Scorpion erecting his head of five stars, with 
glittering Antares in the neck, soon stretched 
his whole length in the south ; Arcturus 
hung overhead ; Vega a little to the east ; 
Aquila lower down ; the constellation of the 
Sickle well toward setting ; and the half- 
moon, pensive and silvery, in the southwest. 

June and July, Canada. Such a proces- 
sion of long-drawn-out, delicious half-lights 
nearly every evening, continuing on till 
'most 9 o'clock all through the last two 
weeks of June and the first two of July I 
It was worth coming to Canada to get 
these long-stretch'd sunsets in their tem- 
per'd shade and lingering, lingering twi- 
lights, if nothing more. 

[^No date.'] It is only here in large por- 
tions of Canada that wondrous second wind, 
the Indian summer, attains its amplitude 
and heavenly perfection, — the temperature ; 
the sunny haze ; the mellow, rich, delicate, 
almost flavored air : 

" Enough to live — enough to merely be."" 
2 



DIARY IN CANADA 

June 19. On the train from London to 
Sarnia — 60 miles/ A fine country, many- 
good farms, plenty of open land, the finest 
strips of woods clean of underbrush — some 
beautiful clusters of great trees ; plenty 
of fields with the stumps standing ; some 
bustling towns. 

\_Same date, Sarnia.'] Sunset on the St. 
Clair. I am wi'iting this on Front Street, 
close by the river, — the St. Clair, — on a 
bank. The setting sun, a great blood-red 
ball, is just descending on the Michigan 
shore, throwing a bright crimson track across 
the water to where I stand. The river is 
full of row-boats and shells, with their crews 
of young fellows, or single ones, out practis- 
ing, — a handsome, inspiriting sight. Up 
north I see at Point Edward, on Canada 
side, the tall elevator in shadow, with tall- 
square turret, like some old castle. 

As I write, a long shell, with its crew of 
four stript to their rowing shirts, sweeps 

^ Sarnia (the former home for ten years of the 
late Dr. R. M. Bucke, when a practising physician) 
is a town of about 7000 inhabitants lying on the St. 
Clair River (Canadian side) near Lake Huron, about 
55 miles northeast of Detroit. 

3 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

swiftly past, the oars rattling in their row- 
locks. 

Opposite, a little south, on the Michigan 
shore, stretches Port Huron. It is a still, 
moist, voluptuous evening, the twilight deep- 
ening apace. In the vapors fly bats and 
myriads of big insects. A solitary robin is 
whistling his call, followed by mellow clucks^ 
in some trees near. The panting of the 
locomotive and measured roll of cars comes 
from over shore, and occasionally an abrupt 
snort or screech, diffused in space. With all 
these utilitarian episodes, it is a lovely, soft, 
voluptuous scene, a wondrous half-hour for 
sunset, and then the long rose-tinged half- 
light with a touch of gray we sometimes 
have stretched out in June at day-close. 
How musical the cries and voices floating 
in from the river ! Mostly while I have 
been here I have noticed those handsome 
shells and oar-boats, some of them rowing 
superbly. 

At nearly nine it is still quite light, [the 
atmosphere] tempered with blue film, but 
the boats, the river, and the Michigan shores 
quite palpable. The rose color still falls 
upon everything. A big river steamer is 
crawling athwart the stream, hoarsely hiss- 

4 



DIARY IN CANADA 

ing. The moon in its third quarter is just up 
behind me. From over in Port Huron 
come the just-heard sounds of a brass band, 
practising. Many objects — half-burnt hulls, 
partially sunk wrecks, slanting or upright 
poles — throw their black shadows in strong 
relief on the clear glistering water. 

[Sarnia], June 20. A Far-off Remi- 
niscence. I see to-day in a New York 
paper an account of the tearing down of old 
St. Ann's Church, Sands and ^Vashington 
streets, Brooklyn, to make room for the East 
River Bridge landing and roadway. Away 
off, nearly 1000 miles distant, it roused the 
queerest reminiscences, which I feel to put 
down here. St. Ann's was twined with 
many memories of youth to me. I think 
the church was built about 1824, the time 
when I (a little child of six years) was 
first taken to live in Brooklyn, and I re- 
member it so well then and for long years 
afterwards. It was a stately building with its 
broad grounds and grass, and the aristocratic 
congregation, and the good clergyman, JMr. 
Mcllvaine (afterwards bishop of Ohio), ^ and 

^ Perhaps the best known and most popular 
preacher in Ohio a quarter-century ago. The son 

5 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

the long edifice for Sunday-school (I had 
a pupil's desk there), and the fine gardens 
and many big willow and elm trees in the 
neighborhood. From St. Ann's started, 
over 50 years ago, a strange and solemn 
military funeral, — of the officers and sailors 
killed by the explosion of the steamer Fulton 
at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I remember 
well the impressive services and the dead- 
march of the band (moving me even then 
to tears), and the led horses and officers' 
trappings in the procession, and the black- 
draped flags, and the old sailors, and the 
salutes over the grave in the ancient cemetery 
in Fulton Street just below Tillary (now all 
built over by solid blocks of houses and busy 
stores).! J ^as at school at the time of the 
explosion and heard the rumble which jarred 
half the city. 

Nor was St. Ann's (Episcopal) the only 
church bequeathing Old Brooklyn remi- 
niscences. Just opposite, within a stone's 
throw, on Sands Street, with a high range 
of steps, stood the main Methodist church, 

of Whitman's friend, John Burroughs, in 1902 mar- 
ried a grand-daughter of this Bishop McIIvaine. 

2 The Whitmans then lived in Tillary Street, where 
the father had built them a house. 

6 



DIARY IN CANADA 

always drawing full congregations (always 
active, singing and praying in earnest), and 
the scene of the powerful revivals of those 
days (often continued for a week night and 
day without intermission). This latter was 
the favorite scene of the labors of John N. 
Maffit, the famous preacher of his denomi- 
nation. It was a famous church for pretty 
girls. 

The history of those two churches would 
be a history of Brooklyn and of a main part 
of its families for the earlier half of the 
nineteenth century. 

Sarnia, June 21. A Moonlight Ex- 
cursion UP Lake Huron. We were to 
start at 8 p. m., but after waiting forty min- 
utes later for a music band, which to my 
secret satisfaction did n't come, we and the 
Hiawatha went off without it. 

Point Edward on the Canada side and 
Fort Gratiot on the Michigan — the crossing- 
line for the Grand Trunk Railway, and look- 
ing well alive with lights and the sight of 
shadowy-moving cars — were quickly passed 
between by our steamer, after pressing 
through currents of rapids for a mile along 
here, very dashy and inspiriting, and we 

7 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

were soon out on the wide sea-room of the 
Lake. The far and faint-dim shores, the 
cool night-breeze, the plashing of the waters, 
and most of all the well-up moon, full and 
round and refulgent, were the features of 
this pleasant water-ride, which lasted till 
midnight. 

During the day I had seen the magnifi- 
cent steamboat. City of Cleveland, come 
from above, and, after making a short stop 
at Port Huron opposite, sped on her swift 
and stately way down the St. Clair. She 
plies between Cleveland and Duluth, and 
was on her return from the latter place — 
makes the voyage in three (?) days. At a 
Sarnia wharf I saw the Asia, a large steam- 
boat for Lake Superior trade and passengers ; 
understood there were three other boats on 
the line. Between Sarnia and Port Huron 
some nice small-sized ferry-boats are con- 
stantly plying. I went aboard the Dor- 
mer and made an agreeable hour's jaunt to 
and fro, one afternoon. 

A Sarnia Public School. Stopt im- 
promptu at the school in George (?) where 
I saw crowds of boys out at recess, and 
went in without ceremony among them, 

8 



DIARY IN CANADA 

and so inside for twenty minutes to the 
school, at its studies, — music, grammar, 
etc. Never saw a healthier, handsomer, 
more intelligent or decorous collection of 
boys and girls, some 500 altogether. This 
twenty minutes' sight, and what it inferred, 
are among my best impressions and recol- 
lections of Sarnia. 

[Sarnia]. Went down to an Indian set- 
tlement at Ah-me-je-wah-noong {L e., the 
Rapids) to visit the Indians, the Chippewas. 
Not much to see of novelty — in fact noth- 
ing at all of aboriginal life or personality ; 
but I had a fine drive with the gentleman 
that took me — Dr. McLane, the physician 
appointed by the government for the tribe. 
There is a long stretch, three or four miles, 
fronting the St. Clair, south of Sarnia, run- 
ning back easterly nearly the same distance, 
good lands for farming and rare sites for build- 
ing — and this is the " reservation " set apart 
for these Chips. There are said to be four 
hundred of them, but I could not see evi- 
dences of one quarter of that number. There 
are three or four neat third-class wooden 
dwellings, a church, and council-house, but 
the less said about the rest of the edifices 

9 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

the better. " Every prospect pleases," as far 
as land, shore, and water are concerned, how- 
ever. The Dominion government keeps 
entire faith with these people (and all its 
Indians, I hear), preserves these reservations 
for them to live on, pays them regular 
annuities, and, whenever any of their land 
is sold, puts the proceeds strictly in their 
funds. Here they farm languidly (I saw 
some good wheat), fish, etc. ; but the young 
men generally go off to hire as laborers and 
deck-hands on the water. I saw and con- 
versed with Wa-wa-nosh, the interpreter, 
son of a former chief. He talks and writes 
as well as I do. In a nice cottage near by 
lived his mother, who doesn't speak any- 
thing but Chippewa. There are no very old 
people. I saw one man of thirty in the last 
stages of consumption. This beautiful and 
ample tract, in its present undeveloped con- 
dition, is quite an eyesore to the Sarnians. 

[London, Ont.l, June 24. Tennyson's 
" De Profundis." To day I spent half an 
hour (in a recluse summer-house embowered) 
leisurely reading Tennyson's new poem " De 
Profundis." I should call the piece (to coin 
a term) a specimen of the mystical-recherche 

10 



DIARY IN CANADA 

— and a mighty choice specimen. It has 
several exquisite httle verses, not simple like 
rosebuds, but gem-lines like garnets or 
sapphires, cut by a lapidary artist. These, 
for instance (some one has had a baby) : 

" O young life 
Breaking with laughter from the dark ! "" 

" O dear Spirit half-lost 
In thine own shadow and this fleshly sign 
That thou art thou — who wailest being born." 

Then from " The Human Cry " attached : 

** We feel we are nothing — for all is Thou and in 
Thee; 
We feel we are something — that also has come 
from Thee." 

Some cute friends afterward said it was 
altogether vague and could not be grasped. 
Very likely; it sounded to me like organ- 
playing, capriccio, which also cannot be 
grasped. 

Night of Saturday, July 3d. Good night 
for stars and heavens ; perfectly still and 
cloudless, fresh and cool enough ; evenings 
very long ; pleasant twilight till nine o'clock 
all through the last half of June and first half 
of July. These are my most pleasant hours. 

11 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

The air is pretty cool, but I find it enjoyable, 
and like to saunter the well-kept roads. 
Went out about 10 on a solitary ramble in 
the grounds, slow through the fresh air, over 
the gravel walks and velvety grass, with 
many pauses, many upward gazings. It was 
again an exceptional night for the show and 
sentiment of the stars, very still and clear, 
not a cloud, and neither warm nor cold. 
High overhead the constellation of the 
Harp ; south of east the Northern Cross ; in 
the Milky Way the Diadem ; and more to 
the north Cassiopeia ; bright Arcturus and 
silvery Vega dominating aloft. But the 
heavens everywhere studded so thickly — 
layers on layers of phosphorescence, spangled 
with those still orbs, emulous, nestling so 
close, with such light and glow everywhere, 
flooding the soul. 

Sunday evenings July 4. A very enjoy- 
able hour or two this evening. They sent 
for ine to come down in the parlor to hear 
my friend M. E. L., a deaf and dumb young 
woman, give some recitations (of course by 
pantomime, not a word spoken). She gave 
first an Indian legend, — the warriors, the 
women, the woods, the action of an old chief, 

12 



DIARY IN CANADA 

etc., very expressive. But best of all, and 
indeed a wonderful performance, she ren- 
dered Christ stilling the tempest (from Luke, 
is it ?) 

[^London\ Canada, July 6, '80. Hay- 
making, July 5, 6, 7. I go out every day 
two or three hours for the spectacle. A 
sweet, poetic, practical, busy sight. Never 
before such fine growths of clover and 
timothy everywhere as the present year ; and 
I never saw such large fields of rich grass 
as on this farm. I ride around in a low easy 
basket-wagon drawn by a sagacious pony. 
We go at random over the flat just-mown 
layers and all around through lanes and 
across fields. The smell of the cut herbage, 
the whirr of the mower, the trailing swish of 
the horse-rakes, the forks of the busy pitchers, 
and the loaders on the wagons — I linger 
long and long to absorb them all. Soothing, 
sane, odorous hours ! Two weeks of such. 

It is a great place for birds. No gunning 
here, and no dogs or cats allowed. I never 
before saw so many robins, nor such big 
fellows, nor so tame.^ You look out over 

^ The editor of this diary has the same to record 
of the robins of southern Wisconsin in the same lati- 

13 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

the lawn any time and can see from four or 
fiv^e to a score of them hopping about. I 
never before heard singing wrens (the com- 
mon house ^Tcn, I beUeve), either, to such 
advantage — two of them, these times, on 
the verandahs of different houses where I 
have been staying. Such vigorous, musical, 
well-fibred little notes I (What must the 
vvdnter wren be, then ? — they say it is far 
ahead of this.) 

July 8. I am in the midst of haymaking, 
and, though but a looker-on, I enjoy it 
greatly, untiringly, day after day. Any 
hom' I hear the sound of scythes sharpening, 
or the distant rattle of horse-mowers, or see 
loaded wagons, high-piled, slowly wending 
toward the barns ; or, toward sundown, 
groups of tan-faced men going from work. 
To-day we are indeed at the height of it 
here in Ontario. 

\_No date.'] A muffled and musical clang 
of cow-bells from the grassy wood-edge not 
far distant. 



tude. They have a larger and fresher look than 
Eastern robins. 

14 



DIARY IN CANADA 

July 10-14, Canada. In blossom now : 
Delphinium, blue, four feet high, great pro- 
fusion ; yellow-red lilies [written down for 
him in a lady's handwi'iting as Lilium auran- 
tium and Lilium Buschaiiiuni] ; a yellow 
coreopsis-like flower \_Cosmidium Huriidge- 
anum\ same as I saw Sept. '79 ; wild tansy, 
weed from 10 to 15 inches high, white blos- 
som, out in July (middle) Canada ; straw- 
colored hollyhocks, many like roses, others 
pure white — beautiful clusters everywhere in 
the thick dense hedge-lines ; aromatic white 
cedars at evening ; Canadian red honey- 
suckles ; the fences, verandahs, gables, cov- 
ered with grapevines, ivies, honeysuckles ; a 
certain clematis (the Jackmanni) bursting all 
over with deep purple blossoms, each with 
its four or five great leaves, delicate as some 
court lady's dress, but tough and durable — 
day after day ; I afterwards saw a large six- 
leaved (?) one of pure satin-like white — as 
beautiful a flower as I ever beheld. 

Canada, July 18, '80. Swallow-Gam- 
bols. I spent a long time to-day watching 
the swallows — an hour this forenoon and 
another hour afternoon. There is a pleasant, 
secluded, close-cropt grassy lawn of a couple 

15 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

of acres or over, flat as a floor and surrounded 
by a flowery and bushy hedge, just off the 
road adjoining the house, — a favorite spot 
of mine. Over this open grassy area im- 
mense numbers of swallows have been sail- 
ing, darting, circling, and cutting large or 
small 8's and s's, close to the ground, for 
hours to-day. It is evidently for fun alto- 
gether. I never saw anything prettier — 
this free swallow-dance. They kept it up, 
too, the greater part of the day. 



[Here follows Whitman's journal of his 
midsummer trip with Dr. R. M. Bucke 
down the St. Lawrence and up the Sague- 
nay rivers (Montreal, Quebec, Thousand 
Islands, Cape Eternity, Trinity Rock, etc.). 
The journal is wiitten on the pages of a 
thick pocket " heft " (as the Germans call an 
extemporized book of stitched leaves), 5 by 
S}i inches in dimensions, and is labelled 
" St. Lawrence and Saguenay Trip, July 
and Aug. 1880." It is prefixed by a table 
of distances and a skeleton itinerary (which 
here follow), has three maps pasted in, 
covering the entire route, and contains 
various minor memoranda (names, addresses, 
16 



DIARY IN CANADA 

etc.) scattered here and there, usually on 
the verso of the sheet.] 



Distances. 

Miles. 

From Philadelphia to London about . 520 

London to Toronto 120 

Toronto to Kingston 161 

Kingston to Montreal 172 

Montreal to Quebec 180 

Quebec to Tadousac 134 

Tadousac to Chicoutimi 101 

1388 

[Itinerary.] 

Started from London 8.40 a. m. July 26 by 

R. R. to Toronto ; arrived in T. same 

day. 
Left Toronto by steamboat Algerian July 

27, arrived at Kingston 5 a. m. 28th ; 

stopt at Dr. W. G. Metcalf 's ; down at 

the Thousand Islands three days — 

"Hub Island." 
Left Kingston 6 a. m. Aug. 3 ; arrived at 

Montreal same evening. 
Left Montreal Aug. 5 ; down to Quebec in 

steamer Montreal. 

2 17 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

Left Quebec 7 a. m. Aug. 6 in steamer 
Saguenay ; down the St. Lawrence ; 
splendid scenery. 

Night of 6th and 7th up the Saguenay to 
Chicoutimi and Ha Ha Bay ; Cape 
Eternity and Trinity Rock. 

Then down, and, on our return, Aug. 8 
early a. m. arrived in Quebec ; staid 
two days. 

Aug. 10 early a. m. in Montreal ; left [same 
day] in Algerian ; had a pleasant voy- 
age (two days and nights) to Toronto. 

Aug. 12 arrived in Toronto ; 3 hours at 
Queen's Hotel; left 11 a.m. 

Aug. 12, 13, 14, in Hamilton. 

Back home to London Aug. 14. 

July 26. Started this morning at 8.40 
from London for Toronto, 120 miles by 
R. R. I am writing this on the cars, very 
comfortable. We are now (10-11 a.m.) 
passing through a beautiful country. Rained 
hard last night, and showery this morning ; 
everything looking bright and green. I am 
enjoying the ride (in a big easy R. R. chair 
in a roomy car). The atmosphere cool, 
moist, just right, and the sky veiled. All 
pleasant fertile country, sufficiently diver- 

18 



DIARY IN CANADA 

sified, frequent signs of land not long cleared, 
— black stumps (often the fields fenced 
wdth the roots of them), patches of beauti- 
ful woods, beech, fine elms, thrifty apple 
orchards, the hay and wheat mostly har- 
vested, barley begun, oats almost ready ; 
some good farms (a little hilly between 
Dundas and Hamilton, and the same on 
to Toronto). Corn looking well, potatoes 
ditto ; but the great show-charm of my ride 
is from the unfailing grass and woods. 

Hamilton a bustling city. 

As we approach Toronto everything looks 
doubly beautiful, especially the glimpses of 
blue Ontario's waters, sunlit, yet with a 
slight haze, through which occasionally a 
distant sail. 

In Toronto at half-past one. I rode up 
on top of the omnibus with the driver. The 
city made the impression on me of a lively 
dashing place. The lake gives it its 
character. 

In Toronto, July 27, '80. Long and ele- 
gant streets of semi-rural residences, many 
of them very costly and beautiful. The 
horse-chestnut is the prevalent tree : you 

19 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

see it everywhere. The mountain ash now 
with its bunches of red berries. 

[^Same date.'] I write this in Toronto, aboard 
the steamboat the Algerian, two o'clock p. m. 
We are presently off. The boat from Lewis- 
ton, New York, has just come in ; the usual 
hurry with passengers and freight, and, as 
I write, I hear the pilot's bells, the thud of 
hawsers unloosened, and feel the boat squirm- 
ing slowly from her ties, out into freedom. 
We are off, off into Toronto Bay (soon the 
wide expanse and cool breezes of Lake 
Ontario). As we steam out a mile or so 
we get a pretty view of Toronto from the 
blue foreground of the waters, — the whole 
rising spread of the city, groupings of roofs, 
spires, trees, hills in the background. Good- 
bye, Toronto, with your memories of a very 
lively and agreeable visit. [Entry here of 
name of James W. Slocum, of Detroit, 
Wagner car conductor, and memorandum 
" your James Slocum."] 

July 27. A Day and Night on Lake 
Ontario. Steamboat middhng good-sized 
and comfortable, carrying shore freight 
and summer passengers. Quite a voyage 
[Toronto to Kingston], the whole length of 
20 



DIARY IN CANADA 

Lake Ontario ; very enjoyable day, clear, 
breezy, and cool enough for me to wrap my 
blanket around me as I pace the upper deck. 
For the first sixty or seventy miles we keep 
near the Canadian shore — of course no land 
in sight the other side ; stop at Port Hope, 
Coburg, etc., and then stretch out toward 
the mid-waters of the lake. 

I pace the deck or sit till pretty late, 
wrapt in my blanket, enjoying all, — the 
coolness, darkness, — and then to my berth 
awhile. 

July 27 [28]. Rose soon after three to 
come out on deck and enjoy a magnificent 
night-show before dawn. Overhead the 
moon at her half, and waning half, with 
lustrous Jupiter and Saturn, made a trio- 
cluster close together in the purest of skies 
— with the groups of the Pleiades and 
Hyades following a little to the east. The 
lights off on the islands and rocks, the 
splashing waters, the many shadowy shores 
and passages through them in the crystal 
atmosphere, the dawn-streaks of faint red 
and yellow in the east, made a good hour 
for me. We landed on Kingston wharf just 
at sunrise. 

21 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

Lake Ontario. Lake O. is 234 feet 
above sea-level (Huron is over 500, and 
Superior over 600). The chain of lakes and 
river St. Lawrence drain 400,000 square 
miles. The rainfall on this vast area averages 
annually a depth of thirty inches — so that 
the existence and supply of the river, fed by 
such inland preceding seas, is a matter of 
very simple calculation after all. 

July 28. To-day Dr. M [etcalf] took me 
in his steam yacht a long, lively, varied 
voyage down among the Lakes of the Thou- 
sand Islands. We went swiftly on east of 
Kingston, through cuts, channels, lagoons (?) ^ 
and out across lakes ; numbers of islands 
always in sight ; often, as we steamed by, 
some almost grazing us ; rocks and cedars ; 
occasionally a camping party on the shores, 
perhaps fishing ; a little sea-swell on the 
water ; on our return evening deepened, 
bringing a miracle of sunset. 

I could have gone on thus for days over 
the savage-tame beautiful element. We had 
some good music (one of Verdi's composi- 
tions) from the band of B battery as we 

^ These query marks are always Whitman^s. If I 
use one, it shall be in brackets. 
22 



DIARY IN CANADA 

hauled in shore, anchored, and listened in 
the twilight (to the slapping rocking gurgle 
of our boat). Late when we reached home. 
July 29. This forenoon a long ride 
through the streets of Kingston and so out 
into the country and the lake-shore road. 
Kingston is a military station (B battery), 
shows quite a fort, and half a dozen old 
martello towers (like big conical-topt pound 
cakes). It is a pretty town of fifteen thou- 
sand inhabitants. 

July 31, Evening, Saturday, Lakes of 
the Thousand Islands. I am writing this 
at and after sundown in the central portion 
(" American side," as they call it here) of 
the Lakes of the Thousand Islands, twenty- 
five miles east of Kingston. The scene is 
made up of the most beautiful and ample 
waters, — twenty or thirty woody and rocky 
islands (varying in size, some large, others 
small, others middling), the distant shores of 
the New York side, some puffing steamboats 
in the open waters, and numerous skiffs and 
row-boats, all showing as minute specks in 
the amphtude and primal naturalness. 

The brooding waters, the cool and delicious 
air, the long evening with its transparent 

23 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

half-lights, the glistening and faintly slap- 
ping waves, the circles of swallows gam- 
bolling and piping. 

[In the back of the Canada diary is the 
following, evidently a first draft or memoran- 
dum for a letter to some one.] 

Aug. 1. I write this in the most beauti- 
ful extensive region of lakes and islands one 
can probably see on earth. Have been here 
several days ; came down, leisurely cruising 
around, in a handsome little steam-yacht 
which I am hving on half the time. The 
lakes are very extensive (over 1000 square 
miles) and the islands numberless, . . . here 
and there dotted with summer villas. 

[^Sa??ie date.~\ Sunday noon. Still among 
the Thousand Islands. This is about the 
centre of them, stretching twenty-five miles 
to the east and the same distance west. 
The beauty of the spot all through the day, 
the sunlit waters, the fanning breeze, the 
rocky and cedar-bronzed islets, the larger 
islands with fields and farms, the white- 
winged yachts and shooting row-boats, and 
over all the blue sky arching copious — make 
a sane, calm, eternal picture, to eyes, senses, 
and my soul. 

24 



DIARY IN CANADA 

Evening. An unusual show of boats 
gaily darting over the waters in every direc- 
tion ; not a poor model among them, and 
many of exquisite beauty and grace and 
speed. It is a precious experience, one of 
these long midsummer twilights in these 
waters and this atmosphere. Land of pure 
air ! Land of unnumbered lakes I Land of 
the islets and the woods ! 

Lakes of Thousand Islands, Aug. 2. 
Early morning ; a steady southwest wind ; 
the fresh peculiar atmosphere of the hour 
and place worth coming a thousand miles 
to get. O'er the waters the gray rocks and 
dark-green cedars of a score of big and little 
islands around me ; the added splendor of 
sunrise. As I sit, the sound of slapping 
water, to me most musical of sounds. 

One peculiarity as you go about among 
the islands, or stop at them, is the entire 
absence of horses and wagons. Plenty of 
small boats, however, and always very hand- 
some ones. Even the women row and sail 
skiffs. Often the men here build their boats 
themselves. 

Forenoon. A run of three hours (some 
thirty miles) through the islands and lakes 

25 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

in the Princess Louise to Kingston. Saw 
the whole scene, with its sylvan rocky and 
aquatic loveliness, to fine advantage. Such 
amplitude — room enough here for the sum- 
mer recreation of all North America. 

Aug. 4. In Montreal ; guest of Dr. 
T. S. H.^ Genial host, dehghtful quarters, 
good sleep. Explore the city leisurely, but 
quite thoroughly : St. James Street, with its 
handsome shops ; Victoria Bridge ; great 
French church ; the English Cathedral ; the 
old French church of Notre Dame de Bon 
Secours ; the handsome, new, peculiarly and 
lavishly ornamented church of Notre Dame 
de Lourdes ; the French streets of middle 
life, with their signs. A city of 150,000 
people. 

But the principal character of Montreal, 
to me, was from a drive along the street 
looking down on the river front and the 
wharves, where the steamships lay, — twenty 
or more of them, — some as handsome and 

1 Dr. T, Sterry Hunt, who first brought Whitman's 
writino;s to the notice of Dr. Bucke. He is described 
by Dr. B. in Walt Whitman Fellowship Papers, 
No. 6, as Mineralogist to the Geological Survey of 
Canada. 

26 



DIARY IN CANADA 

large as I ever saw ; beautiful models, trim, 
two or three hundred feet long ; some mov- 
ing out, one or two coming in ; plenty of 
room, and fine dockage, with heavy masonry 
banks. 

Aug. 5, Forenoon. Three hours on 
Mount Royal, the great hill and park back 
of Montreal ; spent the forenoon in a leisurely 
most pleasant drive on and about the hill ; 
many views of the city below ; the waters of 
the St. Lawrence in the clear air ; the 
Adirondacks fifty miles or more distant ; 
the excellent roads, miles of them, up hill 
and down ; the plentiful woods, oak, pine, 
hickory ; the French signboards — Passez ^ 
droite — as we zigzag around ; the splendid 
views, distances, waters, mountains, vistas, 
some of them quite unsurpassable ; the con- 
tinual surprises of fine trees, in groups or 
singly ; the gi-and rocky natural escarp- 
ments ; frequently open spaces, larger or 
smaller, with patches of goldenrod or white 
yarrow, or along the road the red fire- weed 
or Scotch thistle in bloom ; just the great 
hill itself, with its rocks and trees unmolested 
by any impertinence of ornamentation. 



27 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

Sunrise, the St. Lawrence near Quebec, 
Aug. 5-6. Have just seen sunrise (standing 
on the extreme bow of the boat), the great 
round dazzling ball straight ahead over the 
broad waters, — a rare view. The shores 
pleasantly, thickly, dotted with houses, the 
river here wide and looking beautiful in 
the golden morning's sheen. As we advance 
northeast the earth-banks high and sheer, 
quite thickly wooded ; thin dawn-mists 
quickly resolving ; the youthful, strong, 
warm forenoon over the high green bluffs ; 
little white houses seen along the banks as 
we steam rapidly through the verdure ; 
occasionally a pretensive mansion, a mill, 
a two-tower'd church (in burnish'd tin). A 
pretty shore (miles of it, sitting up high, 
well-sprinkled with dwellings of habitans, — 
farmers, fishermen, French cottagers, etc.), 
verdant everywhere (but no big trees) for 
fifty miles before coming to Quebec. These 
little rural cluster-towns just back from the 
bank-bluffs, so happy and peaceful looking. 
I saw them through my glass, everything 
quite minutely and fully. In one such town 
of perhaps two hundred houses on sloping 
gi'ound, the old church with glistening spire 
stood in the middle, and quite a large grave- 

28 



DIARY IN CANADA 

yard around it. I could see the white head- 
stones ahnost plainly enough to count them. 
Approaching Quebec, rocks and rocky 
banks again, the shores lined for many miles 
with immense rafts and logs and partially 
hewn timber, the hills more broken and 
abrupt, the higher shores crowded with many 
fine dormer-window'd houses. Sail-ships 
appear in clusters with their weather-beaten 
spars and furl'd canvas. The river still 
ample and grand, the banks bold, plenty of 
round turns and promontories, plenty of 
gray rock cropping out. Rafts, rafts, of logs 
everywhere. The high rocky citadel thrusts 
itself out — altogether perhaps (at any rate 
as you approach it on the water, the sun two 
hours high) as picturesque an appearing city 
as there is on earth. 

Aug. 6, Qiichec. To the east of Quebec 
we pass the large fertile island of Orleans — 
the fields divided in long lateral strips across 
the island and appearing to be closely culti- 
vated. In one field I notice them getting 
in the hay, a woman assisting, loading and 
hauling it. The view and scene continue 
broad and beautiful under the forenoon sun ; 
around me an expanse of waters stretches 

29 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

fore and aft as far as I can see ; outlines of 
mountains in the distance north and south ; 
of the farthest ones the bulk and the crest 
lines showing through strong but delicate 
haze like gray lace. 

Aug. 6. [By daylight down the St. 
La^vTence.] Night — we are steaming up 
the Saguenay. 

Ha Ha Bay [?] I am here nearly 1000 
miles slightly east of due north from Phila- 
delphia, by way of Montreal and Quebec — 
in the strangest country. Had a good 
night's sleep ; cold, — overcoat, but up before 
sunrise, — northern lights every night, as 
with overcoat on or wrapt in my blanket, 
I plant myself on the forward deck. 

[Note at end of diary.'] Walt Whitman 
is at Ha Ha Bay. He says he would like 
to spend a month every year of his life there 
on the Saguenay River and near Cape 
Eternity and Trinity Rock. 

Aug. 6 and 7, Ha Ha Bay. Up the 
black Saguenay River, a hundred or so miles 
— a dash of the grimmest, wildest, savagest 
scenery on the planet, I guess ; a strong, deep 
(always hundreds of feet, sometimes thou- 
sands), dark- water 'd river, very dark, with 

30 



DIARY IN CANADA 

high rocky hills, green and gray edged banks 
in all directions — no flowers, no fruits 
(plenty of delicious wild blueberries and 
raspberries up at Chicoutimi, though, and 
Ha Ha Bay). 

The Priests. Saw them on every boat 
and at every landing. At Tadousac came a 
barge and handsome yacht, manned and 
evidently owned by them, to bring some 
departing passengers of their cloth and take 
on others. It looked funny to me at first to 
see the movements, ropes and tillers handled 
by these swarming black birds, but I soon saw 
that they sailed their craft skilfully and well. 
[The people are] simple, middling industrious, 
merry, devout Catholic, a church everywhere 
(priests in their black gowns everywhere, 
often groups of handsome young fellows), 
life toned low, few luxuries, none of the 
modern improvements, no hurry, often big 
families of children, nobody *' progressive," 
all apparently living and moving entirely 
among themselves, taking small interest in 
the outside world of poUtics, changes, news, 
fashions ; industrious, yet taking life very 
leisurely, with much dancing and music. 



81 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

[Here follows what is evidently a thumb- 
nail sketch for the first part of Fancies 
at Navesink.'] Again I steam over the 
Saguenay. The bronze-black waters, and 
the thin lines of white curd, and the dazzling 
sun-dash on the stream, the banks of grim- 
gray mountains and the rocks — I see the 
grim and savage scene. 

Made a good breakfast of sea-trout, finish- 
ing off with wild raspberries. Hotels here ; 
a few fashionables, but they get away soon ; 
it is almost cold, except the middle of a few 
July and August days. 

{Undated fragment.'] The inhabitants 
peculiar to our eyes ; many marked charac- 
ters, looks, by-plays, costumes, etc., that 
would make the fortune of actors who could 
reproduce them. 

A more or less aquatic character runs 
through the people. The two influences of 
French and British contribute a curious 
by-play. 

Contrasts all the while. At this place, 
backed by these mountains high and bold, 
nestled down the hamlet of St. Pierre, ap- 
parently below the level of the bay, and 
32 



DIARY IN CANADA 

very secluded and cosy. Then two or three 
miles further on I saw a larger town high up 
on the plateau. At St. Paul's Bay a stronger 
cast of scenery, many rugged peaks. 

[A^o date.'] On the Saguenay. The 

NOTICEABLE ITEMS ON LAND I the loilg 

boxes of bluebeiTies (we had over a thousand 
of them carried on board at Ha Ha Bay 
one day I was on the pier) ; the gi-oups of 
" boarders " (retaining all their most refined 
toggery) ; the vehicles, some " calashes," 
many queer old one-horse top-wagons with 
an air of faded gentility. On the water : 
the sail craft and steamers we pass out 
in the stream ; the rolling and turning up 
of the white-bellied porpoises ; soine special 
island or rock (often very picturesque in 
color or form) ; all the scenes at the piers 
as .we land to leave or take passengers and 
freight, especially many of the natives ; the 
changing aspect of the light and the mar- 
vellous study from that alone every hour of 
the day or night ; the indescribable sunsets 
and sunrises (I often see the latter now); the 
scenes at breakfast and other meal-times (and 
what an appetite one gets !) ; the delicious 
fish (I mean from the cook's fire, hot). 
3 33 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

I had a good opera glass, and made con- 
stant use of it, sweeping every shore. 
Northern lights every night. 

Quebec from the River, Aug. 8, '80. 
Imagine a high rocky hill (the angles each 
a mile long), flush and bold to the river, 
with plateau on top, the front handsomely 
presented to the south and east (we are 
steaming up the river) ; on the principal 
height, still flush with the stream, a vast 
stone fort, the most conspicuous object in 
view; the magnificent St. Lawrence itself; 
many hills and ascents and tall edifices 
shown at their best — and steeples ; the 
handsome town of Point Levi opposite ; a 
long low sea-steamer just hauling out. 

Aug. 8, Sunday forenoon. A leisurely 
varied drive around the city, stopping a 
dozen times and more. I went into the 
citadel, talked with the soldiers (over 100 
here, Battery A, Canadian militia, the 
regulars having long since departed ; a fort 
under the old dispensation, strong and 
picturesque as Gibraltar). Then to several 
Catholic churches and to the Esplanade. 

The chime-bells rang out at intervals all 
the forenoon, joyfully clanging. It seems 

34 



DIARY IN CANADA 

almost an art here. I never before heard 
their pecuhar sound to such meUifluous 
advantage and pleasure. 

The old name of Quebec — Hochelega 
[sic']. [Hochelaga (ho-shel'-a-gah) is derived 
from an aboriginal word meaning beaver- 
grounds.] 

Aug: 9, Quebec. Forenoon. We have 
driven out six or seven miles to the Mont- 
morenci Falls, and I am writing this 
as I sit high up on the steps, the cascade 
immediately before me, the great rocky 
chasm at my right and an immense 
lumber depot bordering the river, far, far 
below, almost under me, to the left. It 
makes a pretty and picturesque show, but 
not a grand one. The principal fall, 30 or 
40 feet wide and 250 high, pours roaring 
and white down a slant of dark gray rocks, 
and there are six or seven rivulet falls 
flanking it. 

Since writing the above 1 have gone down 
the steps (some 350) to the foot of the Fall, 
which I recommend every visitor to do : the 
view is peculiar and fine. The whole scene 
grows steadily upon one, and I can imagine 
myself, after many visits, forming a finally 

35 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

first-class estimate/ from what I see here 
of Montmorenci over a part of the scaly, 
grim, bald-black rock, the water falling 
downward like strings of snowy-spiritual 
beautiful tresses. 

The road out here from the city is a very 
good one, hned with moderate-class houses, 
copious with women and children. Doors 
and windows wide open, exhibiting many 
groups to us as we passed. The men appear 
to be away : I wonder what they work at ? 
Every house for miles is set diagonally with 
one of its corners to the road, never its 
gable or front. There seems little farming 
here, and I see no factories. 

Through the forenoon watched the cascade 
under the advantages now of partly cloudy 
atmosphere and now of the full sunshine. 
The tamarack-trees. — The great loaves of 
bread, shaped like clumsy butterflies. — Jo 
Le Clerc, our driver, lifting his finger. — 

^ This word in the MS. has a query above it, — a 
common habit of Whitman, not only in this diary, 
but elsewhere, when he felt not wholly satisfied but 
that he might be able later to write a better word. 
Very frequently, too, in this diary, a second (alterna- 
tive) word is written above the first, as if in his 
mind the choice were doubtful. 
36 



DIARY IN CANADA 

Hundreds of (to our eyes) funny-looking 
one-horse vehicles, — calashes ; antique gigs ; 
heavy two-seated covered voitures, always 
drawn by one horse ; long narrow strips of 
farms [as in France] ; coarse, rank tobacco ; 
potatoes, plenty and fine-looking ; big-roofed 
one-story houses with projecting eaves ; 
entire absence of barns. — The ruins of 
Montcalm's country-seat, the strong old 
stone walls still standing to the second story ; 
indeed, many old stone walls, including those 
of the old city, still standing. 

Aug. 9 [on the St. Lawrence]. Very 
pleasant journey of 180 miles this afternoon 
and to-night ; crowds of Catholic priests on 
board with their long loose black gowns, 
and the broad brims of their hats turned 
into a peculiar triangle. 

Aug. 10. Again in Montreal. As I 
write this I am seated aft in the delicious 
river breeze on the steamboat that is to take 
me back west some 380 miles from here to 
Hamilton. Two hours yet before we start ; 
few passengers, as they come east by the 
boats, and then generally take the railroad 
back. Montreal has the largest show of sail 
ships and handsome ocean steamers of any 

37 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

place on the river and lake line, and I am 
right in full sight of them. 

Going on the river westward from Montreal 
is pretty slow and tedious, taking a long 
time to get through the canals and many 
locks, to Lake St. Francis, where the 
steamer emerges to the river again. These 
rapids along here — the boats can descend, 
but cannot go up them. A gi-eat incon- 
venience to the navigator, but they are quite 
exciting with their whirls and roar and foam, 
and very picturesque. 

Here, too, are graveyards. In a lovely 
little shore-nook, under an apple-tree, green, 
grassy, fenced by rails, lapped by the waters, 
I saw a grave, — white headstone and foot- 
stone ; could almost read the inscription. 

Aug. 10, Evening. Wondrously clear, 
pleasant, and calm. I think it must have 
been unusual ; the river was as smooth as 
glass for hours. All the stars shone in it 
from below as brightly as above, — the young 
moon, and Arcturus, and Aquila, and, after 
10, lustrous Jupiter. Nothing could be more 
exquisite. I sat away forward by the bow 
and watched the show till after 11. 



38 



DIARY IN CANADA 

Aug. 12, 11 A. M. As we take the cars 
at Toronto to go west, the first thing I 
notice is the change of temperature ; no 
more the cool fresh air of the lakes, the St. 
Lawrence, and the Saguenay. 

Aug. 12, 4 >^ P.M. I am writing this at 
Hamilton, high up on a hill south of the 
town. 

Aug. 13, p. M. I write this on a singular 
strip of beach off Hamilton. 

To-day have been driving about for several 
hours, — some of the roads high up on the 
crest of the mountain ; spent a pleasant hour 
in the wine vaults of Mr. Haskins, and an- 
other at the vineyard and hospitable house 
of Mr. Paine, who treated us to some 
delicious native wine. 

Aug. 14. I am writing this on the high 
balcony of the Asylum at Hamilton (Ontario, 
Canada).* The city is spread in full view 
before me. (Is there not an escaped patient ? 
I see a great commotion, — Dr. W. and 
several attendants, men and women, rushing 

^ Dr. Bucke was during the year 1876 medical 
superintendent of this asylum. — Free Press, Lon- 
don, Ont., Feb. 2, 1902 (obituary). 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

down the cliff). — A dark, moist, lowering 
forenoon; balmy air though; wind south- 
west. 

Aug. 14, 5% P. M. Arrived back in Lon- 
don a couple of hours ago, all right. Am 
writing this in my room. Dr. B.'s house. 

Along the way on the journey from Hamil- 
ton to London everywhere through the car- 
windows I saw locust-trees growing and the 
broad yellow faces of sunflowers, the sumach 
bushes with their red cones, and the orchard 
trees loaded with apples. 

The waters, the lakes, and the indescrib- 
able grandeur and ^ of the St. Lawrence 
are the beauty of Canada through this vast 
line of two thousand miles and over. In 
its peculiar advantages, sanities, and charms, 
I doubt whether the globe for democratic 
purposes has its equal. 

[A little farther back in his diary Whit- 
man has the following equally enthusiastic 
paragraphs of generalizations on Canada. 
They are labelled thus : 

" ? For lecture — for conclusion ? "] 

A grand, sane, temperate land, the amplest 

1 The blank space, and others below, are re- 
produced from the MS. 

40 



DIARY IN CANADA 

and most beautiful and stream of water, 

— a river and necklace of vast lakes, pure, 
sweet, eligible, supplied by the chemistry of 
millions of square miles of gushing springs 
and melted snows. No stream this for side 
frontier — stream rather for the great central 
current, the glorious mid-artery, of the great 
Free Pluribus Unum of America, the solid 
Nationality of the present and the future, the 
home of an improved grand race of men and 
women ; not of some select class only, but 
of larger, saner, better masses. I should say 
this vast area (from lat. and ) 

was fitted to be their unsurpassed habitat. 

I know nothing finer. The European 
democratic tourist, philanthropist, geogra- 
pher, or genuine inquirer, will make a fatal 
mistake who leaves these shores without 
understanding this. — I know nothing finer, 
either from the point of view of the soci- 
ologist, the traveller, or the artist, than a 
month's devotion to even the surface of 
Canada, over the line of the great Lakes and 
the St. Lawrence, the fertile, populous, and 
happy province of Ontario, the [province] of 
Quebec, with another month to the hardy 
maritime regions of New Brunswick, Nova 
Scotia, and Newfoundland. 

41 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

[In Whitman's Canadian diary, as I re- 
ceived it, I find the following notes on loose 
sheets.] 

I see, or imagine I see in the future, a 
race of two million farm-families, ten milhon 
people — every farm running down to the 
water,^ or at least in sight of it — the best 
air and drink and sky and scenery of the 
globe, the sure foundation-nutriment of 
heroic men and women. The summers, the 
winters — I have sometimes doubted whether 
there could be a great race without the 
hardy influence of winters in due propor- 
tion. 

Total Dominion, 3,500,000 square miles. 
Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Bruns- 
wick, Prince Edward Island, British Colum- 
bia, Manitoba, Hudson Bay, and Northwest 
Territories. (Newfoundland not in Domin- 
ion.) Area equal to the whole of Europe. 
Population, 1880, four to five millions. 

Principal timber: white and red pine. 
The woods are full of white oak, elm, beech, 
ash, maple (bird's-eye, curled, etc.), wal- 
nut, cedar, birch, tamarack, sugar orchards 
(maple). 

^ The St. Lawrence. 
42 



DIARY IN CANADA 

The honey-bee everywhere ; rural ponds 
and lakes (often abounding with the great 
white sweet-smelling water-lily) ; wild fruits 
and berries everywhere ; in the vast flat 
grounds the prairie anemone. 

The fisheries of Canada are almost un- 
paralleled. . . . Then the furs. . . . 

If the most significant trait of modern 
civilization is benevolence (as a leading 
statesman has said), it is doubtful whether 
this is anywhere illustrated to a fuller degree 
than in the province of Ontario. All the 
maimed, insane, idiotic, blind, deaf and dumb, 
needy, sick and old, minor criminals, fallen 
women, foundlings, have advanced and ample 
provision of house and care and oversight, 
at least fully equal to anything of the kind 
in any of the United States — probably in- 
deed superior to them. In Ontario for its 
eighty-eight electoral ridings, each one re- 
turning a member of parliament, there are 
four Insane Asylums, an Idiot Asylum, one 
Institution for the Blind, one for the Deaf 
and Dumb, one for Foundlings, a Reforma- 
tory for Girls, one for Women, and no end 
of homes for the old and infirm, for waifs, 
and for the sick. 

Its school system, founded on the Massa- 
43 



WALT WHITMAN'S 

chusetts plan, is one of the best and most 
comprehensive in the world. 

Some of the good people of Ontario have 
complained in my hearing of faults and 
fraudulencies, commissive or omissive, on 
the part of the government, but I guess 
said people have reason to bless their stars 
for the general fairness, economy, wisdom, 
and hberality of their officers and adminis- 
tration. 

Aug. 21, '80 [London^ Canada]. I rose 
this morning at four and look'd out on the 
most pure and refulgent starry show. Right 
over my head, like a Tree-Universe spread- 
ing with its orb-apples, — Aldebaran leading 
the Hyades ; Jupiter of amazing lustre, soft- 
ness, and volume ; and, not far behind, hea\'y 
Saturn, — both past the meridian ; the seven 
sparkling gems of the Pleiades ; the full 
moon, voluptuous and yellow, and full of 
radiance, an hour to setting in the west. 
Everything so fresh, so still ; the delicious 
something there is in early youth, in early 
dawn — the spirit, the spring, the feel; 
the air and light, precursors of the untried 
sun ; love, action, forenoon, noon, life — full- 
fibred, latent with them all. And is not 

44 



DIARY IN CANADA 

that Orion the mighty hunter? Are not 
those the three ghttering studs in his belt ? 
And there to the north Capella and his 
kids. 

A ug. 29. At Dr. B. 's. The robins on the 
grassy lawn (I sometimes see a dozen at a 
time, great fat fellows). The little black- 
and-yellow bird with his billowy flight [the 
goldfinch] ; the flocks of sparrows. [Else- 
where in this diary he writes of " the long 
clear quaver of the robin, its mellow and 
reedy note," although he erased the words 
as being unsatisfactory. But I think they 
are admirably descriptive of the timbre of the 
robin's evening song as well as the song 
itself.] 

END OF THE DIARY IN CANADA 



45 



FROM OTHER JOURNALS OF 
WALT WHITMAN 



FROM OTHER JOURNALS 
OF WALT WHITMAN 

Wednesday, Uh March, 1863. Scene up 
TO Noon. Close of the 37th Congress ; 
House. Well, here is the 4th of March, 
and two out of the four years of the Lincoln 
administration have gone by. And now 
there are two to follow. What will happen 
during those two years ? 

Forenoon, 4ith March. The House now 
presents a most animated and characteristic 
scene. The ranges of crowded galleries are 
in shadow, while the strong day showers its 
powerful and steady streams upon the floor. 
Did I think and say it looked so much bet- 
ter at night ? Well, I think I never saw it 
look better than now (11/^ a. m.). 

A member from New York has just been 
making a most excited little speech. At 
this moment the clerk is calling the ayes 
and noes. The members and many distin- 
guished and undistinguished visitors are 
filling the floor, talking, walking, sauntering 
in twos or threes, or gathered together in 
4 49 



JOURNALS OF 

little knots. — The clapping of hands calling 
the pages ; the fresh green of the carpets 
and desks ; the strong, good-tinted panel 
frames of the glass roof; the short, decided 
voice of the speaker ; the continual soda-pop- 
like burstings of members calling " Mr. 
Speaker ! Mr. Speaker ! " the incessant bustle, 
motion, surging hubbub of voices, undertoned 
but steady. 

There is a rather notable absence of 
military uniforms on the floor of the house ; 
crowded as it is at this moment, I do not, 
as I sweep my eyes around, see a single 
shoulder-strap. 

Interruption : a message from the Senate 
of the United States ; it is half-past eleven ; 
there are but thirty minutes left for the 
37th Congress ; the ladies' gallery in the 
House is about half of the whole room 
devoted to the public ; a resolution is adopted 
giving a boy who was employed by the 
House $100 — he has had his ankles crushed, 
disabled ; the hands of the clock move on ; 
there is great hubbub and confusion, actual 
disorder ; bang ! bang ! bang ! the speaker's 
hammer is rapidly falling, and he sternly 
calls for gentlemen to come to order ; and 
still the hands of the clock invisibly move 
50 



WALT WHITMAN 

on ; there are but fifteen minutes left ; voices 
of hubbub ; bump, bump, bump, bump, 
bump ! " Gentlemen will please take their 
seats." " Not one step further, gentlemen, 
till there is something like order." 

Five minutes to twelve ; there is a kind 
of hush and abeyance — not the hubbub now 
there has been ; some filibustering is at- 
tempted on a small scale ; tellers are called 
to clear up a disputed vote ; the strong hum 
goes on ; the crowd is very great ; the laws 
of the door have been relaxed and everybody 
appears to have somebody in tow ; the 
hands are on 12 ; the speaker rises ; the 
clerks, officers, pages, gather in a close 
phalanx around the desk, on the steps and 
close to them ; the hubbub subsides into the 
stillness of death ; the doorkeepers guard all 
the doors ; the speaker's address. — The 37th 
Congress is adjourned sine die ; the impres- 
sion evidently good as he concludes ; there 
is hearty applause, and then things are un- 
tied ; the doors fly open ; the many-drest 
public streams in ; all below there is now 
a crawling jam of people, — soldier boys, 
hoosiers, gents, etc. etc. etc. A dust arises 
from the tread of so many footsteps — 
boots with the mud dried on them ; the 

51 



J OURN AL S OF 

last breath of the 37th Congress, full of dim 
opaque particles, rises and fills the air of the 
most beautiful room in the world ; but the 
light strikes down through it ; the crowd 
wave their hats. 

Victor Hugo's Annee Terrible [1870- 
71] (as translated to me by Mr. Aubin, Oct. 
'72). First the Prologue, the splendid por- 
traiture of the People and the Mob. A 
whole world, if it is wrong, does not out- 
weigh one just man. Distinction between 
the People and the Mob — magnificent. It 
is not incense that has broken the nose of 
the Sphinx : it is the bosom made vulgar 
by the belly. — " Sedan." The close, where 
the sword of France representing all the 
great heroic characters and all the famous 
victories (mentioned by name) is "by the 
hand of a bandit" ignominiously surren- 
dered. 

[The passages in "L'Annee Terrible" 
referred to are as follows : 

" Un monde, s'il a tort, ne pese pas un juste, 
Tout un ocean fou bat en vain un grand eceur."" 

Says Hugo : The crowd and the idealist 
have rude encounters : Moses, Ezekiel, Dante, 
52 



WALT WHITMAN 

were men grave and severe. The spirit of 
redoutable thinkers can be better employed 
than in caressing the sphinx — 

" Ce grand monstre de pierre accroupe qui medite, 
Ayant en lui Tenigme adorable ou maudite ; 
L'ouragan n'est pas tendre aux colosses emus ; 
C'est ne pas d'encensoirs que le sphinx est caraus. 
La verite, voila le grand encens austere 
Qu*'on doit a cette masse ou palpite un mystere, 
Et qui porte en son sein qu'un ventre appesantit, 
Le droit juste mele de Tinjuste appetit." 

At the close of the section called "Aoiit " 
and also headed " Sedan," Hugo is de- 
scribing in grandiose imagery the battle of 
Sedan, — the vast clouds of smoke, the 
thunder-roll of the cannon, the feeling of 
honor, of devotion to country, the sublime 
moment when, in the passion of battle, 
the soldier is ready to consecrate his life 
to his country's welfare, when the trumpets 
are breathing their thrilling sounds, and 
the word is " resist or die I " And then 
(continues Hugo) is heard this monstrous 
and cowardly cry " I wish to live," " Je 
veux vivre" (alluding to Napoleon the 
Little). 



53 



JOURNALS OF 

" Alors la Gaule, alors la France, alors la gloire, 
Alors Brennus, Taudace, et Clovis, la victoire, 

Les hommes du dernier carre de Waterloo, 

Et tous les chefs de guerre, Heristal, Charlemagne, 

Napoleon plus grand que Cesar et Pompee 
Par la main d'un bandit rendirent leur epee."] 

New York Visit. Came on to N. Y. 
June 13, '78, to 1309 Fifth Ave. 2d door 
south of 86th street. — At Mr. Bryant's 
funeral [the poet Bryant} at the church in 
4th Ave. June 14, '78. — Up the Hudson 
River to West Point to Mr. and Mrs. 
Bigelow's, Sunday, June IGth. 

(Wm. H. Taylor, policeman, 959 Fifth 
Ave. ; house south of 85th St.^ — Alonzo 
Sprague, 33 years of age — western — been 
two years with Frank Aiken, the actor.) 

Visit to Watson Gilder's, evening of June 
14. Modjeska, Wyatt Eaton, Charles De 
Kay. 

1 Sprinkled through all Whitman''s pocket-book 
diaries are names of men to whom he was at- 
tracted, e.g., a. Pullman-car conductor, a policeman, a 
'bus driver, a great poet. His magnetic love always 
drew him hungeringly toward manly men. 

54 



WALT WHITMAN 

20-24/A June {inclusive). Visit at John 
Burroughs's, Esopus (Smith Caswell). 

25th June. Down the bay with Sorosis 
party. 

July 3, '78. Visited the Tribune news- 
paper office ; read proof [of a letter they 
printed]. Up, up, up, in the elevator some 
eight or nine stories, to the top of the tall 
tower. Then the most wonderful expanse 
and views ! A living map indeed, — all New 
York and Brooklyn, and all the waters and 
lands adjacent for twenty miles, every direc- 
tion. My thoughts of the beauty and am- 
plitude of these bay and river surroundings 
confirmed. Other thoughts also confirmed, 

— that of a fitter name ; for instance, Man- 
nahatta, " the place around which there are 
hurried and joyous waters, continually " — 
(that 's the sense of the old aboriginal word). 

— Was treated with much courtesy by 
Whitelaw Reid,^ the editor who placed his 
cab at my disposal. Had a pleasant evening 
drive through the Park [Central Park], it 
being on my way home. 

^ Perhaps to make up for his long years of 
lending the Tribune to insulting attacks on Whit- 
man. 

55 



JOURNALS OF 

Oct, Nov., etc., '79. Notes in St. Louis. 
In the Mercantile Library on Fourth Street 
(where I used to go for an hour daily to read 
the New York and Philadelphia papers by 
courtesy of JNlr. Dyer) they have a very good 
photograph from life of Edgar Poe and a 
bust of Thomas H. Benton, the best life 
likeness. Also a colossal clay figure, very 
good, of IMr. Shaw, a rich philanthropist 
here, and donor of a handsome park and 
botanical garden to the city. 

\_New York], Sunday, '79. Took a slow 
walk forenoon to-day (Easter Sunday : the 
chick is breaking the Qgg) along Fifth 
Avenue where it flanks the Park, from 
85th to 90th street. I rest my note-book, 
to write this, on the roof-shaped coping of 
the wall. All round this vast pleasure- 
ground has been built a costly, grim, for- 
bidding stone fence, some parts of it seven 
feet high, others lower, capped with heavy 
bevelled rough marble, — in my judgment a 
nuisance, the whole thing. There ought to 
be no such fence ; the grounds ought to be 
open all round (both the spirit of the matter 
and the visible fact and convenience are 
important and require it). 
56 



WALT WHITMAN 

Perhaps (though I am not sure) the gen- 
eral planning, designing, and carrying out 
of this Park, from its original state to the 
present, are successes and the results good. 
But the same ideas, theories (by the same 
person, I understand), applied to Prospect 
Park, Brooklyn, have in my opinion done 
their best to spoil that incomparable hill and 
ground, — in some respects the grandest site 
for a park in the world. The same error in 
Capitol Hill at Washington, — exploiting 
the designs of ingrain carpets, with sprawl- 
ing and meaningless lines. 

^ug. 9, '79. Gorgeous Flowers. As I 
walk the suburbs of a town where I am 
temporarily staying, great sunflowers bend 
their tall and stately discs in full bloom in 
silent salute to the day-orb. Many other 
gorgeous blossoms. Roses of Sharon are 
out, both the white ones and the red. Then 
the tawny trumpet-flower, its rich-deep 
orange-yellow on copious vines in back yards 
and on the gables of old houses. Great balls 
of the blue hydrangeas are not uncommon. 
I stop long before a tall clump of the Japanese 
sunflowers. 



57 



JOURNALS OF 

U May 13/0 26, '81. Down in the country, 
mostly in the woods, enjoying the early 
summer, the bird music, and the pure air. 
For interest and occupation 1 busy myself 
three or four hours every day, arranging, 
revising, cohering, here and there slightly 
rewriting (and sometimes cancelling) a new 
edition of L. of G. complete in one volume. 
I do the main part of the work out in the 
woods. I like to try my pieces by negligent, 
free, primitive Nature, — the sky, the sea- 
shore, the sunshine, the plentiful grass, or 
dead leaves (as now) under my feet, and the 
song of some catbird, wi'en, or russet thrush 
within hearing ; like (as now) the half- 
shadowed tall-columned trees, with green 
leaves and branches in relief against the sky. 
Such is the library, the study where (seated 
on a big log) I have sifted out and given 
some finishing touches to this edition 
(J. R. 0[sgood] pubHsher, 1881). I take 
a bout at it every day for an hour or two — 
sometimes twice a day. 

Received back to-day the MS. of the 
little piece of "A Summer Invocation," 
which I had sent to H.'s [Harper's] maga- 
zine. The editor said he returned it be- 
cause his readers wouldn't understand any 
58 



WALT WHITMAN 

meaning to it. (Put in Holland's [Scrib- 
ner's].) 

The English Sparrows. March 30, '79, 
Sunday forenoon^ 10, 11, etc. The window 
where I sit (after a good breakfast with 
my hospitable friends Mr. and Mrs. J. M. 
S[covel] and their family, who have all gone 
off to church, leaving me to myself) opens 
on a spacious side-yard exhibiting near-at- 
hand views of an old extensive Ivy Vine, 
with thick-matted, yet-green foliage, nearly 
covering the east gable wall of the adjoining 
house (fifty feet square, I should guess), 
alive at this moment, in its sunny exposure, 
with the darting, flirting, twittering, of scores, 
hundreds, of English sparrows, busily en- 
gaged, with much loquacity, pulhng old 
nests to pieces and building new ones. I 
had before in my walks noticed this grand 
Ivy, with its flocks of sparrows ; but now 
alone here, comfortable, I note leisurely the 
little drama, taking it all in and enjoying it. 
(What a noble and verdant vine yet — a 
lesson to old age.) What tireless, vehement 
noisy tit-bits the birds are I What a rolhck- 
ing time I Evidently what fun ! Some- 
times, at a spirt of wind coming, the whole 

59 



JOURNALS OF 

swarm of them, as if frightened, emerge in- 
stantaneously from the recesses of the vast 
vine, and slant and radiate off like flashes ; 
but it is all affectation, for presently they 
return, and operations are renewed and car- 
ried on as actively as ever. It is a hurried, 
whirling, crossing, chattering, most intense 
and interested scene, for an hour. (As 
many have said or thought, who knows but 
what there are beings of superior spheres, 
invisible, looking on the chattering activity 
and affectations of man, with the same critical 
top-loftical air ? Echo — who knows ?) 

Aug. 7, '81. How deeply I was touched 
just now reading in the account of the famed 
Italian tragedian and manager Modena that 
he had succeeded in " founding a school of 
acting with Liberty as its keystone and 
motto " ! With that inspiration he seems to 
have brought forward Salvini and Rossi. 

Leaves of Grass Finished. Boston, 
Oct. 22, '81, 8.30 A. M. I am pencilling this 
in the N. E. and N. Y. depot, foot of Sum- 
mer street, waiting to start west in the 9 
o'clock train. Have been in Boston the last 
two months seeing to the " materiahzation " 

60 



WALT WHITMAN 

of my completed " Leaves of Grass " — first 
deciding on the kind of type, size of page, 
head-lines, consecutive arrangement of pieces, 
etc. ; then the composition, proof-reading, 
electrotyping, etc., which all went on smoothly 
and with sufficient rapidity. Indeed I quite 
enjoyed the work (have felt the last few days 
as though I should like to shoulder a similar 
job once or twice every year). The printing- 
office (Rand and Avery's [corner Franklin and 
Federal streets]) is a fine one, and I had the 
very genial and competent aid throughout 
of Henry H. Clark, principal proof-reader 
and book-superintendent of the concern.* 
And so I have put those completed poems 
in permanent type-form at last. And of the 
present prose volume [what volume ? he did 
not begin to prepare his first and only prose 
volume. Specimen Days, until July, '82 ; see 
first page of that work] — are not its items 
("ducks and drakes," as the boys term the 
little pebble-flats they send at random to 

^ Mr. Clark was for many years at the University 
Press, Cambridge, and used to tell me how he would 
sometimes induce Longfellow to alter a word at his 
suggestion, the poet often dropping in from his home 
on the same street to oversee the work of getting new 
poems into type. 

61 



JOURNALS OF 

skip over the surface of the water and sink 
in its depths) — is not the preceding col- 
lection mainly an attempt at specimen sam- 
ples of the bases and arrieres of those same 
poems? often unwitting to myself at the 
time. 

Sunday Morning, early May, '84. As I 
saunter along I mark the profuse pink-and- 
white of the wild honeysuckle, the creamy 
blossoming of the dog- wood ; everything 
most fragrant, early season ; odors of pine 
and oak and the flowering grape-vines ; the 
difference between shady places and strong 
sunshine ; the holy Sabbath morning ; the 
myriad living columns of the temple, the 
soothing silence, the incense of some moss, 
and the earth fragrance after a rain, strangely 
touching the soul. 

Sunday, Sept. 14, '84, Cape May, N. J. 
I am writing this on the beach at Cape May. 
Came down this morning on the West Jer- 
sey R. R. ; had a good ride along the shore, 
then a sail, beating about in a fine breeze for 
over an hour ; then a capital good dinner (a 
friend I met insisted on my having some 
champagne). After dinner I went down 
alone and have had two soothing hours close 
62 



WALT WHITMAN 

by the sea-edge, seated on the sand, to the 
hoarse music of the surf rolhng in.* 

Jan. 11, '85. AtJ.M. S[covel^s Hinds' 
army reminiscences as he told them by the 
wood fire in S.'s parlor. The scenes of May, 
'64, as witnessed at Fredericksburg ; that 
whole old town glutted, filled, probably 15 to 
20,000 wounded, broken, dead, dying soldiers, 
sent northward from Grant's forces on their 
terrific promenade fi'om the Rapidan down to 
Petersburg, fighting the way, not only day 
by day, but mile by mile — sent up from the 
battles of " the Wilderness "; groups, crowds, 
or ones or twos, lying in every house, in every 
church, uncared for ; the hundreds and hun- 
dreds dying ; the other hundi'eds of corpses 
of the dead ; the fearful heat of the weather ; 
the many undressed wounds filled with mag- 
gots (actually more than one thousand, and 
more than two thousand, such cases). 

[The following four items marked in red 
ink " Specimen Days." There are many such 

^ It was on this Jei*sey shore that, a few months 
previously, he had composed his wonderful poem 
"With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea," of which he 
sent me a proof-slip (as he often did of other poems) 
inscribed " Harper's Monthly, March, '84." 

63 



JOURN A L S OF 

in his MSS. evidently intended for a possible 
new edition.] 

Grisi and Mario arrived in N. Y. Aug. 19, 
1854 ; I heard them that winter and in 1855. 

The cholera in N. Y. in 1855. 

Kossuth in America in 1851 ; I saw him 
make his entree in N. Y. latter part of 1851, 
riding up Broadway. 

N. Y. Exposition (Crystal Palace), 6th 
Ave., 40th to 42d St. ; opened July 14, 1853 
(I go for a year) ; the great heat August 
that year — 400 deaths in three or four days 
in N. Y.^ 

[Among Whitman's MSS. I find the fol- 
lowing clipping from the Brooklyn Daily 
Times, Jan. 20, '85.] 

I recollect (doubtless I am now going to 
be egotistical about it), the question of the 
new Water Works (magnificently outlined 
by McAlpine and duly carried out and im- 
proved by Kirkwood, first-class engineers, 
both), was still pending, and the works, 
though well under way, continued to be 
strongly opposed by many. With the con- 
sent of the proprietor, I bent the whole 

^ For more about this Crystal Palace, see Dr. 
R. M. Buckets Walt Whitman, p. 25. 
64 



WALT WHITMAN 

weight of the paper steadily in favor of the 
McAlpine plan as against a flimsy, cheap 
and temporary series of works that would 
have long since broken down and disgi'aced 
the city. 

This, with my course on another matter, 
the securing to public use of Washington 
Park (old Fort Greene), stoutly championed 
by me some thirty-five years ago against 
heavy odds during an editorship of the 
Brooklyn Eagle, are "feathers in my wings" 
that I would wish to preserve. 

Walt Whitman. 



Q5 



PERSONAL MEMORANDA 
NOTES AND JOTTINGS 

All through young and middle age I 
thought my heredity-stamp was mainly de- 
cidedly from my mother's side ; but, as I 
grow older, and latent traits come out, I see 
my father's also. As to loving and dis- 
interested parents, no boy or man ever 
had more cause to bless and thank them 
than I.^ 

[For Dr. Bucke's Walt IVhitman the poet 
sent on certain autobiographic materials in 
his own autograph. The following para- 
graph was not used by Dr. Bucke.] 

Like the Whitmans, the Van Velsors 
too were farmers on their own land. Though 
both families were well-to-do for those times, 
the biblical prayer for " neither poverty nor 
riches" might have been considered as ful- 
filled in either case. The poet's father died 
in Brooklyn, New York, July 11, 1855 ; the 
" dear dear mother" in Camden, New Jersey, 

^ Written on the back of a letter from James M. 
Scovel, which is dated Oct. 15, 1883. 

m 



L.ofC 



WALT WHITJVIAN 

May 23, 1873. . . . Though the concrete 
and entire foundation of the poet, as person 
and wi-iter, doubtless comes from his soHd 
EngHsh fatherhood, the emotional and 
liberty-loving, the social, the preponderating 
qualities of adhesiveness, immovable gravi- 
tation and simplicity, with a certain conser- 
vative protestantism and other traits, are 
unmistakably from his motherhood, and are 
pure Hollandic or Dutch. 

[For my work on Whitman (the bulk of 
which he read in MS. and approved), he sent 
me the following notes on his ancestry. I 
used a small portion of these, inserting what 
seemed available almost verbatim, but give 
them now entire.] 

Going back far enough ancestrally, Walt 
Whitman undoubtedly comes meandering 
from a blended tri-heredity stream of Dutch 
(Hollandisk),the original Friends (Quakers), 
and the Puritans of Cromwell's time. The 
first Whitman immigrant settled in Con- 
necticut, 1635, and a son of his went over 
to Long Island as farmer at West Hills, 
Suffolk County ; and a young descendant 
five generations afterward marries a daughter 
of Cornelius and Amy Van Velsor (the last 
of Quaker training and nee WiUiams). This 

67 



JOURNAL S OF 

daughter was the mother of W. W. Though 
developed, and Anglofied, and Americanized, 
she was HoUandisk from top to toe, and 
W. W. inherits her to the hfe, emotionally, 
fuU-bloodedness, voice, and physiognomy. 

Whitman favors (as the old vernacular 
word had it) his mother, nee Louisa Van 
Velsor, of Queens County, New York. She 
was of ordinary medium size (a little plus), 
of splendid physique and health, a hard 
worker, had eight children, was beloved by 
all who met her ; good-looking to the last ; 
lived to be nearly eighty. No tenderer or 
more invariable tie was ever between mother 
and son than the love between her and 
W. W. No one could have seen her and 
her father. Major Kale (Cornelius) Van Vel- 
sor, either in their prime or in their older 
age, without instantly perceiving their plainly 
marked HoUandisk physiognomy, color, and 
body-build. Walt Whitman has all of it: 
he shows it in his old features now, his full 
flesh and red color. The Van Velsors 
(Walt's mother's family) were pure Low 
Dutch of the third or fourth remove from 
the original emigrants. Few realize how 
this Dutch element has percolated into 
our New York, Pennsylvania, and other 

68 



WALT WHITMAN 

regions/ not so much in ostensible literature 
and politics, but deep in the blood and breed 
of the race, and to tinge all that is to come. 
'Like the Quakers, the Dutch are very 
practical and materialistic, and are great 
money-makers, in the bulk and concrete of 
the ostent of life, but are yet terribly tran- 
scendental and cloudy, too. IMore than half 
the HoUandisk immigrants to New York 
Bay became farmers, and a goodly portion 
of the rest became engineers or sailors. 

It is curious how deep influences, elements, 
and characteristic-trends operate through 
races and long periods of time, in practical 
events or palpably in long continued strug- 
gles of war and peace — and then sprout out 
eventually in some marked book, perhaps 
poem. Whitman himself is fond of resum- 
ing the history and development of the Low 
Dutch, and their fierce war against Philip 
and Alva, and the building of the dykes, and 
the shipping and trade and colonization from 
1600 to the present, and the old cities and 
towers and soldiery and markets and salt- 
air, and flat topography, and human physi- 

1 See other details of this in my Reminiscences of 
Walt Whitman, p. 89. 

69 



JOURNALS OF 

ognomy and bodily form (not the Jewish 
seems to be more strictly perpetuated than 
these Hollandisk), and their coming and 
planting here in America, and investing 
themselves not so much in outward mani- 
festations, but in the blood and deeds of the 
race ; and the poet considers his *' Leaves of 
Grass" to be, in some respects, spinally 
understood only by reference to that Hol- 
landisk history and personality. 

[The following is marked in red ink : 
" ? a IF for Specimen Days."] 

There is something in concrete Nature 
itself in all its parts that is a quality, an 
identity, apart from and superior to any 
appreciation of the same through realism or 
mysticism (the very thought of which in- 
volves abstraction) or through literature or 
art. This something belonging to the ob- 
jects themselves not only lies beyond all the 
expressions of literature and art, but seems 
disdainful of them and fades away at their 
touch. 

[The two next paragraphs are marked, 
" 2d vol. Specimen Days."] 

After reading the pages of Specimen 
70 



WALT WHITMAN 

Days do you object that they are a great 
jumble, everything scattered, disjointed, 
bound together without coherence, without 
order or system ? My answer would be, So 
much the better do they reflect the life they 
are intended to stand for. 

Though I would not have dared to gather 
the various pieces of the following book in a 
single volume with a generic name unless I 
felt the strong inward thread of spinality 
running through all the pieces and giving 
them affinity-purpose — I yet realize that 
the collection is indeed a melange and its 
cohesion and singleness of purpose not so 
evident at first glance. 

It is said, perhaps rather quizzically, by 
my friends that I bring civilization, politics, 
the topography of a country, and even the 
hydrography, to one final test, — the capa- 
bility of producing, favoring, and maintain- 
ing a fine crop of children, a magnificent 
race of men and women. I must confess 
I look with comparative indifference on all 
the lauded triumphs of the greatest manu- 
facturing, exporting, gold-and-silver-produc- 
ing nation in comparison with a race of 
really fine physical perfectionists. 

71 



JOURNALS OF 

Col. J. W. F[orney] remarked in the 
course of our talk this evening : " If I 
were asked to put my finger on the name 
of any eminent official in this great city 
[Philadelphia] — and I know nine-tenths 
of them — as of undoubted honesty and 
integrity, I could not do it." (F., who has 
been in public life for forty years, and 
knows everybody, especially the Phila- 
delphians, is not a sour man, either — is 
quite lenient, human, tolerant.) [Col. For- 
ney died in 1881.] 

[Notes for a Canada Lecture, never 
DELIVERED.] In modern times the new 
word Business has been brought to the front 
and now dominates individuals and nations 
(always of account in all ages, but never 
before confessedly leading the rest as in our 
19th century) ; Business — not the mere 
sordid, prodding, muck-and-money-raking 
mania, but an immense and noble attribute 
of man, the occupation of nations and in- 
dividuals (without which is no happiness)., 
the progress of the masses, the tie and inter- 
change of all the peoples of the earth. Ruth- 
less war and arrogant dominion-conquest was 
the ideal of the antique and mediaeval hero ; 

72 



WALT WHITMAN 

Business shall be, nay is, the word of the 
modern hero. 

[1883.] Meeting with Thurlow Weed and 
long talk with him. 

Presidential Election. Oct. 31, '84. 
The political parties are trying — but mostly 
in vain — to get up some fervor of excite- 
ment on the pending Presidential election. 
It comes off next Tuesday. There is no 
question at issue of any importance. I can- 
not " enthuse " at all. I think of the elec- 
tions of '30 and '20. Then there was 
something to arouse a fellow. But I like 
well the fact of all these national elections 
— have written a little poem about it (to 
order), — published in a Philadelphia daily, 
of 26th instant.^ [The candidates in '84 were 
Blaine and Cleveland ; the issues tariff and 
Chinese exclusion. Blaine was defeated, 
owing to Conkhng's defection.] 

1 « If I Should Need to Name, O Western World." 
Press, October 26 (styled now "Election Day, 1884." 
It is only poetic prose. Compare it with Whittier's 
nervy lyric " After Election.") 



73 



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